"The Perfect Weapon" begins like a sequel to George Orwell's novel "1984." The year is now 2029, and it is the essence of the mind control exerted by Big Brother, as conceived by Orwell.

But instead of developing a strong theme about human freedom, "The Perfect Weapon" is a muddled and excessively violent action/revenge film.

The two main characters are named Condor and Nina, and they presumably are the two rebels who value freedom and want to free the world from Big Brother. But there are two many double crosses in the scenario, so that it is difficult to empathize with either Condor of Nina.

The crucial scene is when Condor finally has the opportunity to reunite with Nina. It appears that she has betrayed him, but it is clear to us as the viewers that his love is genuine. In the moment that follows, the film falls completely flat with the decision made by our "perfect weapon" named Condor.

This film has received one of the lowest numerical rankings I have ever seen on IMDb. Those low numbers tell the whole story about this film turkey.

I think I'm beginning to learn my lesson. I recently caught Seagal's film "A Good Man", and it was a shocker to see how old and out of shape he's gotten, not so good for a former action star. But here, and thankfully he's not on screen that long, he's simply ballooned all out of proportion to someone who once took his art and fitness somewhat seriously.

But what's even worse here is the story. There's so much inane stuff going on that it's hard to keep a straight face. Like the most inept team of assassins ever, firing upon the story's protagonist, Axon Rey, the Condor (Johnny Messner),and his former girlfriend Nina (Sasha Jackson),somehow miraculously brought back from the dead, until we find out it was a body double that was buried in her place. So there's that, but what's entirely laughable is the idea that Axon and Nina would attempt to find refuge from the hit team in his own apartment! He even mentioned it was the most likely place for the goon squad to look, which made the whole idea even more of a joke.

I don't know what it could possibly be. Does Steven Seagal actually need the money to appear in and produce a picture this bad? If this isn't the hokiest assassin flick ever I'd be surprised to come across a worse one, at least in the present day. And if the Matt Lauer look-alike Johnny Messner shows up in any more pictures like this, he might as well abbreviate his last name to Mess.

Steven Seagal has done some good, or at least watchable, films. Particularly 'Under Siege'. He has also done a lot of mediocre and less films, indicative of laziness and that Seagal was well past his sell by date, and a good deal of them are even very bad.

'The Perfect Weapon' is one of the very bad ones, though not 'Contract to Kill' awful, almost anything is better than that. It is not quite one of Seagal's worst, but that's hardly an endorsement and there is nothing redeeming here. Did not expect much, but watched it because Seagal has shown signs that he can be halfway decent and as said not all his films are bad. Also do appreciate the action genre and there are good films out there in the genre, classics even. 'The Perfect Weapon' is far from that, more closer to a waste of time that shows little signs of trying.

Seagal himself, in a role that is much shorter than is advertised (what is it with all this misleading marketing?),gives yet another lazy and wooden performance that shows that he was not interested and wanted to be somewhere else. His reading-from-an-autocue-like and robotic line delivery in particular betrays that. The rest of the cast are just as poor though in all fairness have little to work with and over-compensate.

The characters are ones we know very little about and don't care what happens to happen, so unengaging and one-dimensional they are. The dialogue is risible, with a lot of cheesiness, awkwardness and far too much talk delivered with little emotion or momentum and bordering on the near-incomprehensible.

Its excessively talky nature affects severely the pacing, which never comes to life. There is no urgency, let alone tension, intrigue or suspense. The action doesn't feature enough in comparison and suffer from pedestrian choreography and laughably bad editing. The story is by-the-numbers, dull and not always easy to follow.

Direction is flat and ill-at ease, while the sound/soundtrack are one-note and obvious as well as poorly recorded and the whole film looks cheap. And it's not just the editing, the slapdash effects and drab photography also.

At the end of the day, terrible in every way. 1/10 Bethany Cox